9 Exercises To Break Your Creative Patterns

“Don’t mistake the limits of your own vision for the limits of the world.”

Creativity: The Ultimate Law Of Human Nature

All humans are creators. By living life, we are creating. New stories, new ideas, new routes home to avoid traffic, new mental games to occupy ourselves at work.

The only difference between people who identify as creative types and the ones that don’t, is the simple matter that one group actually acknowledges this natural rhythm of human experience, while the other bottles up and ignores their basic psychology.

But creativity can be seasonal. And for many of us, it comes in waves.

To the body builder that’s looking to create more volume in his biceps, his plateau may identify itself as the lack of progress in adding more weight to his curl over the past month.

For the singer who is trying to follow up her last successful hit with another banger, her obstacle may be finding the motivation to start again at ground zero and record another track that lives up to her newly inflated expectations.

It happens to all of us.

So next time you hit a wall, try using one (or all) of these 9 Exercises To Break Your Creative Patterns

Keep in mind, the outcome of the work is NOT the measure of success in this practice. What we are trying to do is play with a fresh tool set, follow our ideas, and re-spark a new excitement in the work.

1. Embrace The Basics

Start with the smallest possible unit of progress in your given field. Commit to a daily action, no matter how minor, to maintain your progress.

If you want to be a writer and you have a case of writer’s block, you can commit yourself to one line per day.

It doesn’t matter if it sucks. It doesn’t matter if you sit down and your creativity is peaking and you write for 2 hours. What matters is the consistent action.

The constant self-reinforcement is what counts. It reminds you that you are a writer. That you write every single day.

When I first got into running, I couldn’t go farther than a quarter of a mile without my ankles, knees, and hips tightening up. After 20 years of ice hockey, my body was in shambles.

But I really wanted to race in a triathlon, so I knew I had to figure it out.

I decided I was going to run every single day for a month straight. No matter how painful.

I quickly realized a very powerful lesson. It's not about how far you go. It's about how frequent you go.

The first week my body was ruined. I ran (limped) about a half a mile per day. But I stuck to it.

By the second week, my body started to realize that this was going to be the new norm, and it began to give way to the more powerful mind.

By the time the third week rolled around I was easily progressing and actually starting to enjoy the monotonous discipline.

By the end of the month, I was running 14 miles per week, and I actually programmed myself to look forward to doing it.

Even today, no matter how sore I am, I will jog a half a mile because I’ve recreated myself as a runner.

No matter how far you’ve advanced in your discipline, you’re never too good to revisit the basics.

2. Alter Your Settings

Change your environment to refresh your perspective.

This could be as simple as rearranging the desk or as complex as moving across the world.

Sometimes the sameness of our work habits can drive us insane. Especially if we’re trying to create new ideas and solutions out of thin air.

If you typically work from 11am-5pm but you are lacking motivation, try working from 6am-12pm. You might find that your creative juices are more fluid in the early morning.

After 8 months in a city, sometimes a quiet cabin in the woods will elevate your work. If you work from a quiet home office most days, maybe a busy cafe will excite you to produce.

If you don’t have the freedom to work when and where you want, you can alter some more subtle variables like dimming the lights in your office, playing a different type of music outside of your normal taste, or using aromatherapy like candles or diffusers to trigger a fresh variation in your work.

The Philosopher Friedrich Schiller used to keep a stash of rotten apples in his desk drawer because the smell would help him think. To each their own…

3. Create Some Pressure

Modify the importance of the task at hand. Sometimes raising the stakes can heighten focus. Sometimes lowering the stakes can relieve pressure and allow creativity to flow freely.

Just like changing your external environment, you can also alter your inner chemistry to your advantage.

The circumstances of a tie game with 1 minute left on the clock forces the players to dig deeper and fight harder than they would in the first minute of the game.

Most of us don’t regularly get access to that type of championship pressure, but there’s good news…

These heightened states of performance can be crafted everyday no matter who you are.

Think about it. A sales rep can go through the motions of making 200 cold calls per day nonchalantly knowing that they have an endless supply of paid company resources to use.

But if they knew they only had 50 calls left to bring in a deal or they would get fired, then their performance would most likely be elevated for those calls.

That might be an extreme situation, but we craft stories all the time - most of which never come true.

So why not tell ourselves a story to try to spark a heightened flow state?

For example, if members of a band imagine that there’s a record label watching them practice, they might become more focused on their individual contributions to the band and work harder to ensure the overall sound of the unit.

Or if the same band is nervous to get on stage in front of the crowd, maybe during rehearsals, they imagine that they’re playing in the garage with no one around to judge.

Time restrictions are another tactic we can artificially fabricate to force a certain level of performance.

I used to amuse myself in college by practicing Parkinson’s Law on all of my research papers.

Parkinson’s Law states that the work will expand to fill its allotted time span.

By waiting until the night before a paper was due, I would force myself to give 100% attention to completing the assignment before class; even if that meant pulling an all nighter.

I never missed one. And I graduated at the top of my class.

What’s even more impressive is that I figured out a way to condense several weeks worth of effort into a 12 hour sprint.

Was this healthy? Absolutely not. It probably took a couple years off of my life span.

But it did provide an important lesson in leveraging pressure - whether its artificial or not.

In general, pressure, as a tool, can be turned up or down to help us achieve the state we need to thrive in our work.

4. Host Observers

Introduce an audience or an observer. The presence of others can alter your approach and inject a sense of urgency or importance into your work.

Some people do better in front of crowds, and others don’t. Some overdeliver, while others hold back and become more sheltered.

But in most cases, artists tend to act different in some way when they are being observed.

Remember, the goal in this exercise is not to produce your greatest results. The goal is to help you spark a new excitement.

In that case, it may help to have a novice who is unfamiliar with your work or style to watch you perform. Their beginner’s perspective may remind you of some basic components that you forgot about years ago.

Or perhaps a mentor or expert in another field may provide you with an idea seed that you would not have sprouted on your own.

Even if your work isn’t considered a performance, you can still create opportunities to work under an observer in order to alter your output.

When I was playing college hockey, we used to arrive at our away games a day early to practice in the other teams arena. I used to think our coach was crazy for letting our opponents watch our pregame skate.

What I didn’t realize at that time was that I, and every other player on my team, would dial our focus in for the entire practice, knowing that our competitors were studying our every move.

The added sense of pressure elevated our engagement, lifted us beyond the usual energy levels of our routine practices, and created an electric atmosphere that would carry over into the games.

I’m not saying that you should let your competitors watch your every move and steal your trade secrets. But you can definitely find a way to fabricate an elevated performance by letting people see behind the scenes of your craft.

5. Change The Meaning

Reinterpret the purpose or the audience for your work. This can mean reimagining the end user, the message, or the impact your creation is intended to have.

There are times when we do not want to do the work. It happens to everyone. Perhaps we don’t connect with the effort. Or maybe we can’t understand the importance behind a small task as it relates to the big picture.

Whatever the case, it can be helpful to create a new meaning or story behind our projects.

A poem about love can be perceived very differently depending on who is reading it or what they are thinking about.

A new mother might read it and be overwhelmed with positive emotions about her new baby. An old man might read it and be brought to tears while thinking of the passing of his wife.

The words haven’t changed, but the emotions that they trigger couldn’t be more different.

Try to be open to different versions of the same reality.

If two people are on a road trip, driving through an unknown town, and the driver is distracted by a strange ticking noise in his engine, he only notices the auto shops that they pass.

If the passenger is distracted by the rumbling in his stomach and the reminder that he skipped breakfast, he only sees the dining options.

By the time they get through the town, they’ve both seen a completely different place.

Just like with art or poetry, there are endless interpretations of reality. You are free to explore any version that brings out the best in you.

6. Play With Perspectives

Change your sensory input to shift your creative output. This could involve listening to different music, using unfamiliar tools, or engaging in a new routine to stimulate fresh ideas.

As creators, our jobs are to take in data from the world around us, synthesize it through our own unique lenses, and produce our own filtered version for others to digest. It's an ongoing cycle as old as time.

But sometimes, we become set in our routine ways. We patternize our consumption. And over time, we become more resistant to change and less inclined to experiment with new inputs.

And this can lead to stagnation. Especially if what we’re comfortable with has previously worked in the past.

For example, my friend was trying to learn copywriting to become a better marketer. For 12 months, he read 50 books on copywriting, branding, marketing, you name it.

After about a year, even though he knew all the technicalities of copywriting, he felt like his ads hadn’t changed much. So he went back to reading what he enjoyed…

It was only after reading 2 classic novels that the storytelling started to click for him. He had spent so much time rigorously incorporating his textbook copywriting strategies that he had forgotten the basic principles of storytelling.

Playing with different perspectives and downloading different information than his habitual sources helped him fill in the gaps.

Where are most of your inputs coming from? What changes might give you another point of view?

Make an effort to become conscious of the rigidity of your consumption patterns. Take in new information sources openly and see how they compliment your foundational knowledge.

7. Create For Others

Imagine you're producing work for someone you admire or for a completely different audience. This can help you step outside your usual patterns and innovate.

Humans are creatures of habit. And our work can definitely reflect that.

A helpful practice to break the same mental pattern is to try to do the work as if you are someone else.

As an example, think of ghostwriters in the music industry. A male ghostwriter might be tasked with writing a love song for a female singer.

In order to do this, he needs to break his routine string of thought. So he puts himself into the character of the heartbroken female singer to feel the emotions that it will take to create a worthy piece of music.

Otherwise, he could never develop a compelling act for the singer.

So next time you’re faced with a challenge, try putting yourself into a different characters frame of mind and do the work as if you’re them.

It’s helpful to have a role model in every facet of life - business, fitness, spirituality, etc. It can be someone that’s alive, someone that lived thousands of years ago, or an alter ego you completely made up.

The purpose is to get out of your typical pattern of thinking and challenge yourself to push your own boundaries.

Everyone has a perceived idea of who they are and what they’re good at. This is nothing but a limitation placed on you by yourself or others.

Try stepping outside of yourself and into someone else’s character.

8. Visual Enhancers

Use visual or mental imagery to inspire your work. Picture a scene, a story, or an emotion to infuse your creation with new meaning.

Sometimes we get into our work and we don’t quite know what direction we’re heading in.

Thinking deeply about a specific image, or a detailed scene that we want to portray in our work can help us channel our passion into a direction that’s suitable for the current workflow at hand.

Or for tasks that aren’t as creative, we can meditate on the emotions that we will feel once we reach our goals.

Visualizing every positive outcome that can derive from the work we are doing helps us to find meaning and inspiration in the day to day.

And the deeper we practice and more clearly we can see our own mental images, the better we can share them with the world around us.

9. Choke The Guidelines

Restrict the amount of input or direction you have for a task. This encourages improvisation and unique contributions that might not emerge with a fully fleshed-out plan.

Models, frameworks, and formulas are amazing tools that we use to condense the outrageous flow of data that we are exposed to every day. You’re reading one right now :)

But sometimes these things can be suffocating to our creative drive.

Think through all the rules we subconsciously follow with our work without questioning why.

For one, they help our brains automate more thinking, which has certainly been helpful throughout our evolution - up to this point.

But rules are, by definition, restrictions. They force us into average behavior.

Breakdown your work related “rules.” Determine what’s a law, and what’s a guideline. And open up room to push the boundaries.

When trying to create something outside of the average, it may be helpful to think outside of the constraints that lead there. And that includes your own patterns.

The idea is to limit the amount of information that goes into creating the project. By enforcing too many restrictions, we often limit our range of what’s possible.

Final Notes: Avoid Rigidity

These practices are not rigid guidelines. They are starting points for you to break your mental habits and get outside your habitual work patterns.

The intention is to inspire a change in routine and provoke new lines of thought that can lead to breakthroughs in any creative field.

Consider changing these to align with your discipline. Or create your own from scratch.

The exact practices are not important. The point is to break the habitual structure to push the limits forwards.

We are all creators and it's up to us to contribute to the never ending cycle of innovation. We are the giants whose shoulders the future generations will stand on.

Practice these exercises to continuously push the boundaries!

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